"Test everything; retain what is good.” (1 Thes 5:21) A laywoman expresses concerns about issues in the Roman Catholic Church to foster positive dialogue by posing and exploring questions.
Please remember that Canon Law says it is not only a right but a duty to question the church. Also, Canon Law provides an over-riding power to the sensus fidelium (sense of the faithful). By this, Canon Law says that if the sensus fidelium (collective of the faithful) reject a law, it is not valid.

Brothers and sisters, now as in other times, economic conditions cause many
people to be unemployed or underemployed.Consequently, numerous people live in poverty.I will leave to economic historians the task
of understanding the complex reasons as to how and why these economic
conditions exist.Instead, I offer some
reflections on things we might do regardless of how extensively we feel any negative
impact.My reflections are based upon a
poem by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

The fruit of silence is prayer.

The fruit of prayer is faith.

The fruit of faith is love.

The fruit of love is service.

The fruit of service is peace.

1.The fruit of silence is prayer. Find your silence.Turn off gadgets for a while and separate
yourself from the world’s noise so that you can hear what God and God’s
creation are telling you.Do not fear the
silence.It is in the silence that God
will come to you, or that you will realize God is already quietly accompanying
you.God is capable of flamboyant cartoon
character style superhero feats but predominately works in understated
simplicity.

In the silence, you can converse with God.But, again, do not fear the silence.Refrain long enough from rattling through your
wish list telling God what to do to listen to what God wants of and for
you.It’s o.k. to respond to what you
hear.Such dialogue with God, listening
and responding, is called, “prayer”.

3.The fruit of faith is love.As your silent prayers lead you to understand
where you place your faith, you will learn what and whom you love.You also will better understand who loves
you.In this silence God’s untiring love and acceptance
can sometimes become clearer.Likewise
for understanding which people offer you untiring love and acceptance and which people need
your untiring love and acceptance.

4.The fruit of love is service.Clearer understanding of love inspires
service in almost an infectious way.What
does God want you to do?Does your
understanding of God’s will conveniently resemble your own will or does it
resemble care for the totality of creation?

Our actions loudly express our definition of love.This is where the gospels’ good news messages
come to life. Be slow to judge and quick
to forgive.Seek truth rather than
justifications.Care for the poor, ill,
weak, and marginalized rather than create, ignore or worsen their situations.

Beginning with Rerum Novarum, Catholic social teachings introduced the
concept of “subsidiarity”, an organizing principle that speaks of the need to balance
between individual and government efforts to care for people.It was written in response to a growing concern
stemming from communism that people would abdicate personal responsibility completely
to the government for the care of people by saying “it’s the government’s job
to care for people.” Quite simply,
subsidiarity says that society should use the smallest, most local entity that
can effectively address needs.It does
not swing the pendulum all the way back to no government responsibility.

We must return to subsidiarity’s original meaning rather than the
perverted self-serving, selfish, politicized ones of late, used as excuses to
slash human services from governmental budgets so as to keep more money for one's self.If a governmental entity provides the most
effective way to address the need, then Catholic teaching says the government
should address it and individual citizens should pool their tax monies to fund
it.If individuals can most effectively
address it, then they should.Sometimes
a labor union best helps address the situation.For this reason, Catholic social teaching strongly supports the right
for workers to organize and engage in collective bargaining.

Subsidiarity encompasses individual, collective union and governmental efforts
as valid potential responsible organizations for addressing society’s
needs.The question is not “should I pay
for this”; it is “how shall I pay for this.”The difficulty lies in determining the most effective approach.In some cases, such as millions of people
lacking healthcare, we can easily say that the current approach is not
effectively living the gospel value of caring for the sick.In such instances, “any” versus “the most”
effective approach is a vast improvement and highly moral.

Millions of impoverished people can seem daunting.It is easy to think their care is beyond my
scope and abilities to address.Yet,
subsidiarity challenges individuals to not use this as an excuse to become
selfish, detached or callous.It
challenges us to understand our role in creating or fixing massive
problems.It challenges us to loosen the
grip on our money either to generously share it directly with the poor or to
pool it with other people’s money via taxes, charities or union dues.And it challenges us to do this without
judging while at the same time trying to understand and address root
causes.

I offer this list of reflections to help challenge ourselves on the
question of subsidiarity.

If you are an employer, do you work or
just reap from other’s efforts?Do you
employ friends and family?If so, do
they work harder than others so as to set an example or are they enjoying unearned
benefits from cronyism and thereby driving up costs and taking jobs from honest workers?Do you pay a
just wage and follow Catholic teachings that support collective bargaining
rights?Do you accept a just wage or are
you over-compensated?

Do you pay a just wage regardless of race or gender rather than discriminate? Do you provide flexible working situations to support employees attending family needs? Do you provide your
employees with healthcare so as to prevent and address illness?Do you have more intimate knowledge of your
general ledger and balance sheet than you do of your employees?Have you de-humanized your employees into
human “resources”, sourced from the lowest cost alternative as though they were a piece of wood or plastic part?

Are you honest in your business
dealings?Do you embrace truth?Do you welcome suggestions for improving
operations to better serve your clients and employees?Do you employ enough people to provide quality
products and services or do you cut corners in the interest of increasing your
financial profits?Do you pay your fair
share of taxes to local, state and national governments or do you find
justifications for your dishonesty or greed?

If you are an employee, do you offer a
fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage?Do you engage in dishonest practices that cost your employer and
customers more money such as saying you’re sick when you are not, taking advantage
of expense reports, or taking office supplies for personal use?Do
you waste time or contribute to counter-productive work environment activities
such as gossiping or bullying? Do you
offer your best efforts and try to improve your skills?

Do you provide quality goods and
services? Do you treat customers with
respect and care? Do you question when
you see policies that cause waste?

If your wages or work conditions are unjust,
do you work with others in solidarity to address them with management in a
constructive manner?Do you refuse to
pay union dues while reaping the benefits of those who do pay union dues?Do you disparage unions while enjoying the
benefits of their negotiating efforts?

If you are seeking employment, do you
treat finding a job as your fulltime job until you have a job?Are you engaging in activities that improve
or diminish your employability?Have you
adjusted your spending patterns and sought assistance?Are you making your needs known?

For all people, do you truly give as much
as you are called to give?Do you give
10% of your gross earnings towards caring for the poor, ill, weak and
marginalized or do you mostly give donations to organizations that benefit you
or are inwardly focused (such as is the case with many churches)?Do you donate a few canned goods, buy some
giving tree gifts, or donate spare change at the holidays and consider your
obligations to the poor met?

Do you perform works of charity to make yourself feel good, stopping
when you have a sufficient sense of euphoria or do you tirelessly love and care
for others?

Do you depersonalize and dehumanize the poor, ill and marginalized so
that you can be callous or indifferent to their needs fooling yourself into
thinking you are different than them, or do you seek interactions with them,
learning how much in common “they” have with you.

Do you complain about paying taxes because you are greedy and
selfish?Do you engage in your government
to help identify and implement solutions rather than just complain about
problems?Do you let go of your money or
do you treat taxes and charitable donations as private bank accounts that
should only be disbursed according to your personal wishes?Do you have the humility to recognize that
your ideas for solving problems might not be the best or even plausible ones,
or do you entrench yourself in your ideas and surround yourself with people of
similar mindset?Do you listen for ways
to collaborate or do you treat negotiations as a zero-sum game where someone
wins and someone loses?

Do you pay your bills, on time and before spending money on other
things?Do you overextend yourself
financially and expect other people to compensate for your excess?Do you confuse wants and needs to the point
your personal spending reflects priorities not aligned with the gospel?Do you cherish money and things so much that
you make financial decisions based upon short-term, personal financial cost, or
do you weigh the human or long-term financial costs of your spending decisions?

Do you look for “free” stuff and take “free” things though you can
afford to pay?Do you accept or seek
government funds just because you qualify for them, though you do not need
them?Do you think more about how you
can give or what you can get?

My brothers and sisters, we are the Body of Christ.Jesus’ presence in the world is not an
abstraction or just an invisible force.It
has flesh and blood, our flesh and blood.When we ask God to help poor little Lupe, Luis, LiYung, Latifa,
Lucretia, Leopold, Leonid, Laura or Larry, we must immediately ask if God asks
us to answer that prayer, putting some skin on Jesus.

Do not despair that you personally cannot answer all prayers.If you could, you would be God.Instead, look for what you can do working with
others either through local, charitable, union or governmental
organizations.And, for the love of God
and God’s creation, have enough integrity to not call your greed,
irresponsibility or apathy “Christian values.”

If you are feeling the negative impacts of the economy, know that you
are loved and worthy.Forgive the ignorance,
arrogance and apathy of your fellow humans.…But for the grace of God and the luck of circumstances, many would be in your position.However, in their fear of being in your
position someday, some try to pretend that this could not happen to them.Forgive them; they truly know not what they
do.

Recognize and do what you can but have the humility to admit what you
cannot.Seek those who will assist.Be patient with those who won’t.Know that you are the face of Christ staring
with haunting eyes at the rest of the body of Christ.May God inspire the Body of Christ to stop self-inflicting
wounds and focus on caring and healing.

5.The fruit of service is peace.Through offering tireless loving service
aligned with God’s will, we shall find individual and collective peace.

4 comments:

I feel like the whole point of your blog is to continually draw upon the fact that inspiration for faith and change comes just as much from the questions as the answers. This post hit the nail on the head in that regard. You took the fire within and expressed it eloquently. If even one person walks away reflecting on any of these questions then the post was worthwhile. And good, news! I did.Thanks for continuing to share your gifts of thought and word Mom.

There's a homeless man who sits at the corner next to the church. God knows his name but I do not. He's there every Sunday - rain, shine, bitter cold... I don't ignore him; I stop and chat or at least smile and say hello. I have passed him for the last three and a half years, probably four times ever Sunday as I go back and forth between the church and the religious education classroom where I teach. He is comforting just by the regularity of being there, of smiling and the same cordial candor."Hi there, how are you?""Oh, I woke up this morning.""That's all we ask."It sort of breaks off there as I've already been walking backwards to say the last statement even though my feet have carried me past him and intend to keep walking. Part of it is habit; part of it is friendly good will from both of us. But none of it really digs into who he is or what's his story. What are his joys and what his sorrows? I have a very superficial and impersonal relationship with this man whose presence nonetheless I find comforting and even miss when he perchance skips a Sunday. I comfort myself with the rationalization that I at least say hi and chat unlike those who walk past hurriedly without acknowledging his existence. I tell myself there are plenty of people at church I see every Sunday and similarly only exchange pleasantries. And yet with them it doesn't feel like I'm avoiding something. He is different. He makes me uncomfortable not because of what he says or does but out of regret for what I don't say and don't do.

How can I see in him what I see in my friends and co-workers and everyone else I see regularly but get to know? Why do I see him regularly and treat him like a stranger? Why is it so uncomfortable for me? Why is it easier to rationalize my actions than change them? How many are there whom I just walk past and don't even recognize or acknowledge? How can I see them too?

~AW

P.S. I wrote this as my reflection to the Advent "SacredSpace" reading for the evening before even seeing your blog post. Maybe my own shortcomings can help your other readers think about theirs.

About Me

I am a single mother of three who from the eyes of the Roman Catholic hierarchy is in full communion with the Church. But I question if any woman is capable of being in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church due to clericalism, sexism, and the marginalization, and emotional abuse of women.
I hold a master degree in theology from Loyola (Master of Pastoral Studies, M.P.S.). I am not employed by the Catholic Church but rather am an executive consultant.
Some ask if I want to be a priest. We are baptized priest, prophet and king. I feel I am more called to exercise my prophetic voice than a priestly one.
(Artwork supplied courtesy of one of my daughters.)